05.02.2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We continue with our blog series including 5 articles presenting the results of the science competition organised by the Global Business School Network and the HUMLOG Institute at Hanken School of Economics: The HUMLOG Challenge. Each of the posts will be published in Friday afternoon weekly and today is time for the third post. Below you find the text by the team representing University of Houston, Texas USA.\u202fTheir team performed in the third place of the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Team Houston<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thuy Le,\nHuyen Vi Le, Crystal Gamboa, Derick Del Rio, Kareen Nguyen<\/p>\n\n\n\n University of Houston<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Coronavirus 2019 disease created a health crisis within\nthe U.S. Hospitals nationwide are facing supply shortages, overcapacity in\npatients, and overworked personnel. A massive problem seen within the supply\nchain is medical staff not being provided sufficient amounts of Personal\nProtective Equipment (PPE). Our team focused on providing a solution for the PPE\nshortage seen in the Harris County area. Harris County is the area with the\nlargest amount of reported COVID-19 cases in Texas. We found it critical to\nprovide a supply chain solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris\nCounty hospitals suffer from a shortage of PPE equipment. Items such as\nhospital gowns, face masks, hand sanitizers, and nasal swabs are lacking for\nmedical personnel. Reasons for this shortage include: delivery disruptions,\nlack of visibility, and limited supplier diversity. To combat these, we based\nour team\u2019s solution on insights gathered from information on how hospitals such\nas Texas Children\u2019s provided solutions to solve the PPE shortage. Our solution,\nInvoSource, a mobile application, addresses the three issues seen with the\nshortage. Instantaneous PPE inventory updates, easily accessible databases, and\nforecasting technology would not just solve the issues for the shortage, but\nthose seen within the entire PPE supply chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three biggest problems within\nthe Harris County PPE supply chain are procurement and delivery disruptions,\nthe lack of visibility, and the limited supplier diversity. With the increase\nof the cases, hospitals within Harris County were struggling to locate\nsuppliers, handle backlogs, and forecast PPE. Hospitals were finding it\ndifficult to procure equipment due to the outbreaks in Asia, specifically in\nChina, which impacted the movement and delivery of finished goods to America.\nThis made depending on suppliers difficult because factories were forced to\nshut down, impacting the productivity and employment size. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lack of\nvisibility within the supply chain of PPE also became apparent when the entire\nnation was scavenging for them. Hospitals could not trace the components and\nproducts from the manufacturers to their hospitals. The PPE supply chain had\nweak risk management and could not detect when a risk was going to occur in the\nindustry. With no backup plans, the hospitals in Harris County found themselves\nstruggling to forecast their reorder quantity, safety stock, and future demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another issue that hospitals faced\nwas the limitations of suppliers. Instead of having a handful of options to\nchoose from, hospitals tend to stick to max of three suppliers and usually\noutsource suppliers. With the demand for PPE increasing in even our top\nsupplier country, the U.S. struggled to procure and secure PPE. Hospitals could\nnot turn to their suppliers for assistance because their suppliers were also\nturning to other suppliers for help. Despite mentioning the three problem\nareas, which are procurement & delivery disruptions, visibility, and\nlimited suppliers, many other bottlenecks also fit into this problematic supply\nchain puzzle. We also experienced problems with raw materials, machines,\ntransportations, and many more. Our suppliers were also depending on their\nproviders. With the uncertainty of the supply chain of PPE, hospitals in Harris\nCounty were and are still struggling to meet the surging demand for PPE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To tackle these three problems\nwithin the supply chain of PPE, we researched solutions that hospitals carried\nout when the pandemic hit. Many of the hospitals performed actions such as\ncreating a make versus buy strategy or had a just-in-time (JIT) methodology\nthat they utilized. A unique solution that we stumbled upon was when we were informed\nthat the Texas Children\u2019s Hospital had a \u201cvetting process\u201d where they gathered\nsuppliers’ credibility to make PPE orders. After brainstorming, our team came\nup with a mobile app called InvoSource, which focuses on accomplishing three\ngoals: improving traceability, visibility, and increasing the number of\nsuppliers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\napplication will present to the user the estimated time of arrival (ETA) and\nalert users of any disruption through messages such as low staffing,\ntransportation bans, and factory closures due to COVID-19. The traceability\nfactor ties in with enhancing the visibility of the PPE supply chain. By using\nthe app, hospitals can digitally store data of current inventory levels and the\nsafety stock amount with ease. Instead of having to write down stock levels,\nusers can note down any changes in stocks and update the data in real-time.\nTherefore, hospitals will have an idea of how much inventory to expect, what\ninventories are backlogged, and for how many days. Overall, this app provides\nvisibility to the supply chain of the PPE inventory. Last, but not least, the app fulfills its one\npurpose of providing hospitals a supplier market to choose from. With a diverse\nset of suppliers, hospitals will compare which suppliers have the PPE they\nneed. Ultimately, the app will aid in streamlining the purchasing process.\nAlthough our creative solution will require time and money, the creation of the\napplication will aid in the emergence of a digital form of the \u201cvetting\nprocess\u201d utilized by the Texas Children\u2019s Hospital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout\nour project, we were in contact with Eric Swaim, the Manager of Strategic\nSourcing and Vendor Management at Texas Children\u2019s Hospital. A specific podcast\nfeatured Michael Brown, the Director of Supply Chain Management at Texas\nChildren\u2019s Hospital, and Eric Swaim in a discussion about how they are sourcing\ntheir products during COVID-19. After listening, we discussed additional\nquestions with Mr. Swaim concerning dilemmas they were continuing to face at\nTexas Children\u2019s. He mentioned that an essential factor in maximizing their\nsupply chain was to communicate daily with their stakeholders. We also\ndiscovered the H-Force initiative that Houston universities and public\norganizations created to help address PPE shortages for local area medical\nprofessionals and first responders in the fight against COVID-19. One of the\nstrategies they enacted was 3D Printing Face Shields for healthcare workers.\nThis research inspired our solutions that will assist with the PPE supply\nchain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the original aim of this\napplication is to fix problems that arose during the pandemic, its usefulness\nextends past this period. Increased traceability, visibility, and the ability\nto diversify the supplier base are useful traits year-round. To carry out the\ntraceability mission, suppliers must know of this application and must be\nwilling to be transparent with their processes. To properly utilize the\napplication to increase visibility, hospitals must transition their PPE\ninventory data to the app\u2019s database. After that step, as hospitals purchase\nPPE, the data specific to the hospital will change in real-time. As hospital\nstaff use PPE, the information will change as well. As for giving hospitals a diverse supplier\nmarket, hospitals will need to contribute. Just like how Amazon customers can\nreview products, hospitals can vet and rate suppliers. This will let others\nknow who can be trusted and who to avoid. The feature that allows hospitals to\ndigitally store inventory levels and update them upon usage can be used to\ntrack trends. The application can use hospital-specific data to record the\ncorrelation between PPE availability and usage during certain situations, time\nof year, etc. Within the application, a community section can be created where\nhospitals within certain regions can interact with one another. Unexpected\nsituations do tend to happen, sometimes PPE cannot be ordered in time, so\nhospitals can help each other out. Make a post on the app to let others know of\nthe situation and what is needed to help; other hospitals around will come to\naid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 05.02.2021 We continue with our blog series including 5 articles presenting the results of the science competition organised by the Global Business School Network and the HUMLOG Institute at Hanken […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}